The Love Of Lee's Life

Director Steven Soderbergh says he's retiring from film. If so, it's too bad his last project was Behind The Candelabra, currenty showing on HBO.  Starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, it's the story of Liberace's love affair with Scott Thorson.

The two met in the 1970s when Liberace was in his late 50s and Thorson still a teen.  The early days of the relationship, when Liberace seduces Thorson and brings him into his household, is the best part of the story (just as the early days are often the best part of a relationship).  They go on to establish a true rapport and seem to be in love, before it all falls apart with Thorson's drug use and Liberace's fooling around.  Thorson would later sue Liberace, but the two would reconcile in Liberace's final days when he was dying of an AIDS-related illness.

So it's your basic boy meet boy, boy gets boy, boy loses boy story.  The flamboyance and kitsch of Liberace and his surroundings, as well as Douglas's performance, add to the fun, but by the second hour the story gets to be a drag.  Damon does a good job as well, and Rob Lowe is memorable as the plastic surgeon who tries to make Liberace look younger and Thorson look more like Liberace.

Marvin Hamlisch, in what must have been one of his last assignments, adapts Liberace's work faithfully, which was a mix of technical talent and just awful music.  Liberace was a successful act for decades, but really, who enjoyed this stuff?

PS  Debbie Reynolds is unrecognizable as Liberace's grumpy mom.  At one point she says "It is what is it." I don't believe people were saying that in 1980.